Begin at the Beginning

One of the things tha I try to do in our homeschool is to go through history in a chronological order.  In the elementary grades (Cycle 1, according to some factions of the Classical education model), we started from the ancient world.  Now that we are in the middle grades (Cycle 2), I want to start at the beginning again, but this time I want to start at the beginning of life, i.e. prehistory.

One can go as far back as the Big Bang Theory, or the birth of the earth, but that, to me, is stretching too far into science so I decided that we will just start from the evidence of life, i.e. fossils.  It is very handy that our patio is laid with natural stones that contain fossilised plant imprints, so that is a very good place to start.

It doesn't take much to pique Tiger's curiosity so I directed him to the relevant books to acquire the necessary background information,

before breaking out a fossil-making kit to make plaster casts of various fossils.

Tiger also made a scaled-down cardboard model of a Hibbertopterus, which is a two-metre long prehistoric sea scorpion whose trackway (made 330 million years ago) was found preserved in sandstone in Fife.

In our typical fashion of homeschooling, we wanted to see whether we could find any real fossils ourselves so we visited a quarry in Gloucestershire to try our luck.

There was a whole lot of stone-staring that day... we were at a quarry after all.

Take for example the following: do you see anything special about these stones?  Are they just some rocks?

How about now?  Can you spot the fossilised mollusks embedded in the stones?

Once we knew what we were looking at/for, thanks to the very helpful geologists with whom we tagged along on the trip, we started finding fossilised bivales everywhere on the site!  If they were not exciting enough, I'd just like to mention that they are from the Jurssaic period (205 - 102 million years ago) too.

I don't know about you, but I personally think it's very cool to actually find something that is hundreds of millions of years old.  That got us to contemplate the geological changes that have taken place on earth through the ages, such as the simple fact that the land that we were standing on was once the sea floor where these prehistoric creatures dwelt in.

We brought two big bags of fossils home with us that day.  Once they were thoroughly cleaned and dried, we identified each one using a fossil identification chart.  The most interesting one that we found was the gryphaea, commonly known as the devil's toetail from Victorian folklore.

After identification, Tiger made notes in his science notebook to record his observation by a variety of methods that include drawing and taking rubbings.

Below are a few samples from his notes on fossils:

We watched First Life for review, and to check whether we had any gaps in our knowledge so far.  While we have learnt much from books and especially on the field trip, there is nothing quite like watching a good documentary to bring the prehistoric habitats to life.

The link from the study of prehistoric fossils to present day is that of fossil fuel, which we read about using the following books.

However, the greatest outcome of our study so far has been that Tiger is now the proud owner of his own sizeable collection of fossils, which he is only too happy to talk about all day to anyone who'd listen.  I therefore have been on the receiving end of a much-needed education on the various fossils that include:

• their identification
• where they were found
• the geological time period in which the original creatures existed

  

* This post contains affliate links to products that we have bought and used ourselves, and that I recommend.  I earn a little bit of money, at no extra cost to you, when you make a purchase through the link.  Thank you for your support.  :-)

This post is linked up to:

1. Finishing Strong ~ Homeschooling the Middle & High School Years #74
2. Collage Friday: A Day in the Life of Our Homeschool
3. Weekly Wrap-Up: The last one before Texas
4. Hip Homeschool Hop: 2/2/16 - 2/6/16

Countdown to Christmas: Week 2

It has been a difficult week.  Tiger has been very ill with high fever and severe headache all this time.  It took three visits to the GP to find out that Tiger has a middle ear infection, which most likely resulted from his weekly swimming lessons.   There is no a lot to be done apart from taking the prescribed antibiotics and waiting for the bacteria to be gotten rid of.  The infection is a nasty one, causing such a spliting headache for Tiger that he (and consequently, I) has been woken up by the pain several times in the night for the past week.  Hence, all external activities have been cancelled, with Tiger spending most of his time lying on the sofa.  He is only well enough today to play with LEGO and his train set.

Compared to how active Tiger normally is, this week has been very boring for him as all external activities have been cancelled due to his being ill.  With all my not-so-well-planned December plans out of the window, luckily we have been able to manage some continuity with the daily unwrapping of Christmas-related storybooks.

  and rewatching a Christmas classic:

When he felt well enough to get off the sofa, we continued to look through the RI space-themed advent calendar, watched the second week of the Angel Trail, and made tin can lanterns that turned out to be very pretty.

At the very beginning of the week Tiger felt really terrible so in order to distract him from the physical pain that he was experiencing, my husband had the brilliant idea of introducing Tiger to a classic movie that he (my husband) has always wanted them to watch together:

No, Tiger will not be getting any Star Wars-related presents.

Wizard and Wand

After all these years of dressing up, Tiger is still fond of doing so (although I suspect not for much longer).  At Halloween, he often dresses up as a wizard, this year being no exception.

He has been fascinated by magic and wizardry so has been practising magic tricks using a few books and a "Magic Tricks Box" that I picked up from the charity shop.

While this is all just fun to a very imaginative boy, I have a strong aversion to conjurors and magicians as I find the idea of deception, a principle on which most 'magic' we are shown is based on, rather objectional.  Therefore, I tried to redirect Tiger's fascination with wizardry to more 'useful' outlets, such as studying the entire Harry Potter series using the related issue of The Arrow for discussion and other English-related work.

We were at King's Cross station the other day, so we went to look for platform 9¾ where Harry Potter boarded the Hogwarts Express for the first time in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

The station was refurbished a few years ago so it is now very bright and spacious, nothing like the dark and slightly dingy King's Cross station that I knew and missed from more than a decade ago.  The station is now almost too modern, cheerful and well-managed for the setting of the story.  While back in the dark and dingy days anyone could walk up and down the platforms freely and tried one's luck at running into a wall without bothering anyone else, there is absolutely no chance of doing that now without looking like a total fool to everyone in the station since there are now no dark corners in the station where one can hide in shame or embarrassment.  Moreoever, new and shiny electronic barriers are now up in front of all the barriers so there is no way to even walk between the actual platorms 9 and 10 to look for platform 9¾ unless you buy a train ticket beforehand.  In short, more progress but less spontaneous fun.

The station authorities have no doubt thought about the station's significance in the Harry Potter story, so a few feet away from platforms 9 to 11 is a wall dedicated to being the famous platform 9¾ , where tourists and fans can pose for photos and visit the shop.

As a result of our dislike for the commercialised aspect of the story, Tiger is adamant that he would not watch any of the Harry Potter movies despite my repeated encouragement.  I thought he might enjoy the movie's special effects so I started watching the first movie.

Tiger watched for 10 minutes and decided that, "The movie has left out too many details.  The book is better."  So that put an end to movie-watching.  Consequently, we need not go to the Warner Brothers Studio Tour too, which saves me a small fortune.

We used the time and money saved from not watching the Harry Potter movies and not going to the studio tour on some real magic, where Tiger made an electronic wand by soldering bits and pieces of resistors and other electronics bits to create a programmable wand using binary codes.

I have not captured the video very well, but the wand was programmed to display the word "bye".  Apparently the wand is able to be programmed to display different six-character words by changing the codes, but I don't really know how the wand works or how to programme the codes to change the word display.  Luckily Tiger paid attention in class and knows how to work it.

 

No Two Days Are the Same: Friday

Morning

Despite saying last night that he would have a major lay-in today, Tiger actually set his alarm clock for 7:45am and got himself up at that time!  However, I didn't get up early today so once again, our expectations of each other are not quite synchronised -- more work needed there!

We had breakfast, completed our long-than-usual morning chores (we have a few additional chores on Fridays), and settled down to start work at 10:30am.  Tiger started on the second part of his science homework which involved researching on and writing about how clean drinking water gets to UK homes.  As usual, I asked him whether he needed my help.  When he said no, I went to the kitchen and started cooking lunch because last night's dinner was so well received that there was none left for today's lunch.

Tiger completed his research and wrote his report on the water treatment process.  He then brought his completed report into the kitchen and read it out to me.  It was spot on.  No mistakes at all.  I then asked him to prepare for his class this afternoon by looking through the topic, photosynthesis, as we waited for lunch to be ready.

Afternoon

Lunch was ready at 12:15pm.  Pan-fried venison with blueberry sauce served with mash and steamed vegetables (a modified version of this recipe).  Yum!

The rest of the afternoon was taken up by science class.  It is a small class attended by five children.  Two of them were absent this afternoon so it was almost like a one-to-one tutorial today.

I sat at the back of the class as usual, half listening in on the lesson.  Most of the time I read but the science class is always quite lively because of the many hands-on experiments and I find it difficult to concentrate on what I am reading.  When that happens, like it did this afternoon, I work on something else that requires a different type of concentration, such as drawing or hand-lettering.

During the 10-minutes break this afternoon, Tiger's science teacher was interested to know what I was reading because he has seen me reading the same book for weeks.  I showed him the title page and he became interested to know what a liberal education is.  I tried to explain it to him but felt that I have had a failed elevator speech moment.  He is an ex-school teacher and has a young son who attends elementary school, so if I have not explained the concept clearly (I don't always feel up to it), perhaps I have piqued his interest such that he may look into it more closely at his own time.

We arrived home around 4:15pm and my husband took Tiger out to a nearby skate park to play with the remote control car.  Meanwhile, I start drafting the blog post for today and changing the all the sheets in the house -- Fridays are all-sheets-change day so every towel, hand towel, bed sheet, pillow case, etc go into the laundry basket.


Evening

The boys came back in time for me to take Tiger to his swimming lesson.

It is 8pm at the moment, and we are just about to have dinner.

Next week, according to my calendar will be somewhat different from this week, so it is true when I say that no two days are the same for us.

Busy Bee

We saw our first bee of the year (back in April)!

It was one of the rare sunny and warm day when we were enjoying the warmth of the sun in the garden when Tiger spotted the lone honey bee busying collecting nectar from flower to flower.  As it was a little dopey, we were able to observe it very closely such that we could even see its body being covered by pollen and it carrying its pollen basket on its hind legs!

As is becoming quite a (good) habit for us now, we decided to have a go at drawing a bee in our nature journal.

We later learned from the delightful little book shown below that we have drawn the queen bee, with its curved sting.

As we felt quite hungry after concentrating on our drawings, Tiger went into the kitchen and made a honey cake while we listened to a rather appropriate (even thought it's about bumblebee rather than honeybee) piece of music over and over again.

As wonderful as the piece of music is, I won't recommend doing that (i.e. listening to the same 3-minute piece over and over as we did) because now I can hear the music in my head all the time, as if there were a real bee buzzing around inside!  My propensity to hearing buzzing noise is not helped by us looking at the first 21 days of a bee's life while learning about the composer, Rimsky-Korsakov.

Tiger and I took more than six weeks(!) immersing ourselves in the poetic, meditative yet scientifically acute observational prose of The Life of the Bee, by the end of which we both learned a great deal about the fascinating behaviour of the bee and the intimate life within the hive.  The scientific accuracy of the prose that was written over a hundred years ago is validated by a more current documentary.

I got hold of a beeswax candle making kit for Tiger to have a go at feeling and smelling beeswax while making a few candles with the instructions in the kit.  The candles are incredibly easy to make and, according to Tiger, "very satisfying".

All is good until we started looking more into the current problems of honeybee survival.  It seems that the bees have been in trouble for at least 10 years now, and if the trend continues, the entire food chain is going to be aversely affected.

A Preview of Summer

Summer is not here yet but what we have been up to this past week or so is pretty much a preview of what I envisage our summer to be.

Plenty of Outdoor Playtime

When the sun is out (as it had been most of this week), Tiger spends much of his time in the garden, either playing, or doing some gardening work, or swinging on the rope swing that he made by himself.

If he was not in the garden, he could be found patroling the woods, or playing with other children in the hollow of a giant pine tree or in various playgrounds.

Being Physically Active

This year we see a marked improvement in Tiger's physical strength and stamina.  It gives me a lot of joy to see my boy healthy and strong, especially when he had been relatively weak and poorly up till 18 months ago.

A few of Tiger's regular activities (climbing and tennis) will take a break in the summer but others (table tennis, off-road riding, and swimming) will continue all through the summer.


Plenty of "Food for the Soul"

It is no secret that Tiger and I go to Shakespeare's Globe every summer.  To watch at least three Shakespearean play each year is a tradition that has been well established since Tiger watched Macbeth for the first time when he was six years old.  Since we cannot possibly wait until July/August to visit the place again, we have gone ahead to catch the performance of The Merchant of Venice.  We will watch a few more plays before the season ends.

Another venue that we love to go to is the Royal Opera House.  In a similar fashion to watching Shakespearean plays, Tiger started his annual pilgrimage to the Royal Opera House when he was five, to watch the ballet set to Tales of Beatrix Potter.  Compared to the ballet which always involves a lot of graceful movements, operas may not be the cup of tea for everyone.  Nonetheless, Tiger responded very well to his first opera, La Boheme, when we watched it live a few years ago so this year we are getting more exposure to the operas again.

Don Giovanni seems like a good place to start, with its action-packed plot and Mozart's etheral music.  To be honest, every opera I have watched is so full of passion (both in plot and in singing) that any opera will be able to keep a keen audience captivated, as it did us.  With any luck, we might be back for a few more performances before the end of the year!


Plenty of Food for the Tummy

A consequence of hanging out with his mother who is very fond of eating good (i.e. not necessarily expensive but must be interesting) food, Tiger has a well developed appreciation for different types of food.

As a result, Tiger has been very keen to learn to cook at home.  About two months ago, he volunteered to take over the responsibility for cooking our family dinner every Friday, which was welcomed and supported wholeheartedly by Tortoise and I.  I supervised him in the kitchen for the first two weeks, giving him tips on a few basics of cooking and reminding him of safety rules.  Now, he is able to take on the entire process from start to finish: from writing a shopping list for all the ingredients he needs (photo 1) to buying fresh ingredients (photo 2) to the entire cooking process (photos 3 to 5).

Tiger has gone from strength to strength in cooking over the relatively short period of time from when he first started taking over the responsibility for our Friday night dinners two months.  I must say that I am very impressed with his progress and the variety of dishes he is able to make from scratch, all by himself.  Below is a sample of his ever-expanding culinary repertoire:

The fact that he has even managed to cook rice just right (i.e. neither too soggy nor too dry) is very good going.  Then again, one can argue that Tiger has the advantage of having eaten rice all his life so he knows instinctively what a properly cooked pot of rice should look and taste like.


Informal Learning

While I believe that children learn all the time in their own ways, even when the learning doesn't tick any formal curriculum boxes, I want to make a conscious effort to let both Tiger and I have a proper rest over the summer.  However, just because I have saved some money by not signing Tiger up for summer classes, it doesn't mean that he won't learn things informally, just as he has done recently in a series of basic electronics workshops, which is cleverly disguised as toy-making (or toy-destroying, depending on your point of view) sessions.

In the session, the children did not use any textbook or any formal instruction.  All they needed are their enthusiasm to learn (which is plentiful) and an adult who is willing to show them the ropes.